


our hour is a spring (our hope is a delay)

by highboys (orphan_account)



Category: Kimi to Boku
Genre: 5 Things, Awkwardness, F/M, First Date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-10
Updated: 2012-05-10
Packaged: 2017-11-05 02:50:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/401637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/highboys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5 dates they had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our hour is a spring (our hope is a delay)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fuwaesthetic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuwaesthetic/gifts).



1.

 

 

They met at the station at half past nine, she with a small purse in hand and he with an umbrella. Once they said their hellos and settled into awkwardness, he touched his neck and said something about the weather.

She stared at him, curiously, as he prattled on. When he spoke, his lower lip seemed to tremble; his hands, too, fretted at his shirt. He thought she would be merciful; he thought she would be kind. Instead, she turned away.

"Ah," said the boy, the one that perpetually jammed his foot in his mouth. He fell silent, thoughtful.

They bought tickets, separately. She had her own pocket money and he had his pride, but her lips were pursed and her knuckles white as she clutched at her wallet. There were still some lines they had yet to cross, but he had patience, and she was satisfied, for now.

As they boarded the train, he offered her his hand. It was larger than hers, but smaller than he thought it would be. It would not line up perfectly, and there would be gaps and some fumbling, but it would be true, at least. When she took it, red bloomed across his skin, his wrists, his arm, his cheeks. He could imagine she could hear his heart beat, fluttering under her thumb as it rest on the arch of his palm.

Ah, he thought, and she let go. She did not look at him for the rest of the way, or he at her, but their legs pressed against each other's, her with her knees bare, he with a chain dangling from his belt.

The day passed on, the longest of many firsts.

 

 

2.

 

 

There was a small park a few streets away from his house. When he was younger, sand got into his pockets, his shoes, his ears; even now, there was barely a difference.

She laughed at him, from her perch on the swing. It was the first time he heard her laugh in a long time, and he could not help but join her even as he dusted off the sand on his knees; he let her scoop some into her palm and pour it over his head.

"It looks the same, almost," she said. He wanted to take her hands into his own and kiss her fingers, one by one, imploring, searching. "Your hair, I mean."

"I don't know," he said, flicking off bits of dirt. "I think it looks kind of like yours, instead."

She looked baffled, inexplicably. "Mine?" She echoed. She looped the end of a curl around her ring finger and examined it; he stared at the motion, and he felt lost. "But my hair is brown."

If she only knew what sand looked like, when wet; how his eyes misted and the tears slipped through the cracks of his fingers, once. There were secrets he thought of telling her, but not now.

He dumped a handful over her hair, instead. "There," he said, "now it matches."

Her dress crumpled as she pressed her fingers into her thighs. Oh, he thought, I've screwed up, but she stood and brushed her palms over the creases of her skirt. Took a deep breath and tangled her fingers into her curls.

"Let's go," she said, and left her bag behind. He picked it up from the slide and followed her into the sunlight.

 

 

3.

 

 

They ate at a café near the fountain. Rows and rows of stores stretched out beyond them, but there were barely any patrons.

"The life of a college student," said the boy, raising his milk shake in a toast. "Irregular schedules and the run of the town, what's not to love?"

The girl emptied honey into her cup; she stirred her tea with a small spoon and let it steep. "You're skipping class," she said, flatly. The croquet, she cut into smaller pieces and sampled; she scowled.

You are, too, he thought. He contented himself with stealing crumbs off of her plate. They sat like that, she with her tea and he with bread and fruit, a picture of perfectly normal, healthy living. Like brother and sister, he imagined. He filched a larger piece, in vengeance.

"Where do you want to go next?" He asked.

She plucked a slice of fruit, from his small tower. "It's raining," she said. Her voice sounded strange, thoughtful. "Let's stay in for a bit longer."

He watched her peel the rind from the flesh. Her fingers were stained orange, sticky with pulp. She ate in small, careful, measured bites. A tiny drop remained, on the corner of her mouth.

He kissed her, then. Again, and again. In his mind, he did.

He said nothing.

 

 

4.

 

 

In May, he woke up early to save a spot in the park. She was already there when he arrived; a picnic basket lay at her feet. She kicked him when he reached for it.

"There's nothing there for you," she said.

"How cruel!" He said. "How mean! How—"

She upended the basket. Cloth spilled out onto his feet, and nothing else. They leaned to pick it up, at the same time; when their hands touched, she shied away, and he stared at his hands, fisted.

Before sunset, they spread a thin blanket over the grass. He told her stories, to distract himself. Once there was a man and a woman who fell in love. Heartache. Sickness. Death. All points must lead to one end. She listened, but he wondered, often, how much she understood.

She fell asleep at quarter past six. She lay, curled up against her side; a petal fell on her cheek, as she slept. He took off her hat and the pins, on her hair. How much more could he touch. How much more would she let him. Her sandals, next. He stood, and went to search for food to fill his stomach.

She was half-awake when he returned; he carried a bottle of water in one hand and ice cream in the other. She took the water, without asking; he watched the line of her throat, the dip of her collarbone.

There were many kinds of hunger. He ate, mechanically, only when the ice cream dripped on his fingers, his wrists. His white shirt. The hem of her dress.

She bent upwards, to touch his cheek. She sat up and climbed over his knees, to sit on his thighs. He dropped the cone, in surprise. The ice cream left streaks across the grass, white and perverse. Shame.

"Stop that," she said, suddenly annoyed.

"What?" He choked out. His heart. It would not stop beating.

"When the mood gets serious, you zone out or try to laugh it off," she said. "Why do you do that?"

He looked at the front of her dress, rows and rows of dainty buttons that swelled only with the rise and fall of her small chest. "I don't know," he said, helpless. His legs were a dead weight beneath her, immovable, removed.

"Don't you want to kiss me?" She said. Her face, it felt hot and flushed as she pressed it against his forehead, but it was earnest.

Not yet; not yet. These things, he thought of saying, they need preparation. Timing. Setting. You.

Her knuckles touched the back of his hand. His fingers lay, loosely, against his side.

"I think I'd like to go home now," she said.

 

 

5.

 

 

They walked the rest of the way home, from the wedding. Her heels clicked against the asphalt, his leather shoes silent by comparison; when she twirled as they danced, earlier, she was light and easy. She laughed with him, then. Now she was silent, contemplative.

The groom danced with her, too. In his arms, she was not his; she looked like the smitten girl he remembered seeing in his youth, only a few feet taller, give or take. Whatever words the groom whispered to her were lost now, clamped down and untouched, unwanted.

"I didn't know he would get married first," she said, privately. They carried a bottle of wine they shared on the long walk home, and she was drinking from its mouth, by now, tiny sips that meant so much to her.

"I didn't know either," he said. "Do you want to know a secret?"

"What?"

He smiled at her as he loosened his tie. "I thought you went out with him, once, in high school."

She touched her ear; a pearl dangled from it. "That's stupid."

"It isn't," he said.

"I liked someone else," she said. "And then, I liked you." The rest, of course, was history.

They reached the gate of her house. She passed the wine back to him; it was half-full, but it tasted like he imagined she would.

"It was fun," she said. "I'll see you again, sometime, when you're in the area."

He thought she was beautiful, with her hand outstretched to shake his. He took it, and the cloth of her gloves felt smooth against his palm. He still wanted to worship her fingers, each and every one of them. Such a strange ache. Such a troubling fascination.

"Do you still like me?" He blurted out.

She looked surprised, but her smile was soft. Something squeezed tightly, in his chest. "Goodnight, Chizuru."

Goodnight.

 

 

6.

 

 

He called her by her given name. He kissed her, once. He kissed her, again. He tasted (like wine, like vanilla ice cream, like fruit and bread, like sand, like awkwardness) like her.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he said. His voice was hollow in the darkness of the street; it was too dim to make out his face.

"Tomorrow," she echoed.

She watched him leave until she could not see the length of his shadow across the neighbor's fence, and even then it took some time before she turned away. Her footsteps were small and quiet on the path, one, two, three.

Tomorrow.

 


End file.
